Two Black Owned Investment Banks Merging to form the Largest Woman and Minority Owned Firm

“By bringing together two first-class firms, we will accelerate our collective success and greatly enhance our ability to serve our clients using a strong capital base that is now significantly larger,” Shank said in a statement.

Williams founder Christopher Williams will serve as chairman of the firm, whose shareholders include Bill Thompson, former city comptroller and mayoral candidate. Former Clinton administration official Henry Cisneros will be vice chairman.

Shank, a native of Georgia and daughter of a public school teacher, is the only African-American woman to run a Wall Street firm. “I hope I’m not the last”, she told Crain’s in a 2016 interview.

Her firm launched in 1996 after she had dinner at the Post House with Muriel Siebert, the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange. Siebert wanted to create a firm that could lead investment banking deals and asked Shank, who had spent about 10 years at financial advisory firm James J. Lowrey & Co., to run it. Shank was uncertain, but Siebert wasn’t.

“She said I had to take the job,” Shank recalled.